All,
I am a new user and trying to help as much as possible. I have found that there are four types of users here that i can help.
1. Users have a home PC/ home networking problems
2. User has a small company and has no IT department
3. User is in a small / medium company with limited resources
4. User is in a medium / large company with large resource pool but needs technical help.

So my question would be to ask if the team could make different headers which would split the types of help needed. This may produce positive effect to the site with answers being answered quicker and the amount of technical usersincrease.
With me I am looking for help with large companie problems that cannot be found on company site FAQ's etc... I would like to be able to post questions where other high knowledge people could answer.
Also as people progress in there knowledge is a step up and not be confused when someone who is very technical from a large company backgroud chucks a technical responce back to a home user. At least a large company admin person would know that they would need to relay messages in a simple format.

For me it is a problem when I am trying to give a technical answer, and I need to write 4 or 5 replys just to get the understaning of the technical knowledge of the person that i am trying to get the message accross to .Also at certain levels you dont need a step by step walk through talk through guide but an indepth paragraph or two on the internal workings of the program or function.
so the idea of the categories would be:

As I said, I am only new here but trying to find question that are more technical for me is difficult as I can not spend allot of time on the site searching every question. I am working for a large company and leading a team of engineers so I dont have much time to scroll through every question. I would like to give out my experiance as much as possible but also learn so helping as many people as possible and learning also not get board with not so technical questions that people with more time on there hands could answer.

I voted no as it will stop people from helping new users. I think your idea is an excellent one, but it just wouldn't work on a large community-based site as this one.

It would be impossible to administrate. It would require us to test each member's knowledge repeatedly in order to correctly catagorize them. Members just would not stand for such a system.

Currently, we could possibly get a bad apple in the group trying to do damage via wrongful and harmful advice. Yet our membership is alert enough to catch this quickly, and our staff trained well enough to quickly deal with both the advice and the poster.

We also have to depend on a person who is posting a question to provide as correct a subject title as they can, along with as much detailed information as they are able. This rewards them directly in that their question is then seen and understood much more quickly by those who have the answer.

OK i understand, that is why i placed that option in the pole. However i do think that you could be losing members as they can get the degree of answers as the posts go through the list so quickly because so many low level questions are being asked.

I will stay with it and hopefully I dont miss to many technical questions

I try to answer all questions up to my technical limitations, usually based on all posts since my last visit and then any unanswered posts still outstanding. I actually find that some home user questions are harder for me to answer as I don't have the relevant experience (eg I don't try to do file sharing between windows 98 and XP - I run W2k and NT4 domains with 98, 2k and XP clients). So for me, the categories would not change the posts I answer.

I suspect that some people might skip the "newbs" stuff and go to the more interesting posts, which would not be a good thing, although I think the longer standing members would be less likely to do this in general. So I don't think it would be elitist, but unfortunately it might appear elitist, which is almost as bad.

The really hard part would be for someone posting a question to decide where to put it (although your categories ought to answer this I would never underestimate the ability of people not to read). They might be tempted to put it in a higher category in the hope that they might get faster or more expert help, or they might put a complex wireless security question in the small business section because that's what they are, but it might be overlooked.

Generally, I think the headings deal with this quite well already. For example, Exchange and AD are generally considered to be business-level technologies. Windows and Linux may attract different people to answer the questions (where I would be unable to help a new home user with a distro).

Getting away from answering things and looking at this from the point of view of someone wanting to learn, I feel the current method of subjects rather than skill levels assists this more readily. I can wander in and have a look at crypto or Linux stuff without having to work out where to start to what level of knowledge I need to understand the threads. I will soon work out what I do or do not understand (some of the crypto stuff is not even written in plain text, I am sure...). I get more out of reading an answer I could not have given than in reading one at "my level" on a topic. Get bigger by stretching...

If the technical level of the poster is not clear - ask!
This may take longer for them to get a full answer, but it is up to them to put in some effort in their quest for free assistance. If it seems likely they have a little knowledge then skip the step-by-step details and give an overview. (check them out - look at their profile and link to their other posts: do they answer as well as ask? what sort of things do they cover?)
Show the way and offer more detail if required eg: "configure your network card with a static IP address and use your router's IP as the gateway. If you need help with these steps, just ask"

Maybe the suggestion could lead to a review of the guidelines for posting. For example, indicate that first-time posters should indicate the sort of environment, and their own level of knowledge. Assuming this will be read and followed of course...

For my twopenn'orth:
I would move the Members Area to "Misc" where it seems more suitable, move "Security Software" to "Security" and "General Software" to "Computer / Technical / Networking" (so lose the "Software / Programs" heading).
Placing "Windows" next to "E2k / Active Directory" might make it more obvious that both exist, so someone can choose the right place to post. I am sure some people read down the list, see Windows and just wade right in with their domain-related issues.
Extending "E2k / AD" title and/or explanation to explicitly include Group Policy might help too, as many of these end up in Windows generically.[/i]